Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (36 page)

The events of mid-November did not dissuade Imperial General Headquarters. The concept for a big new offensive was refined into a formal plan that the Navy General Staff promulgated in its Directive No. 159 on November 18. This called for the preparation of new airfields in the lower Solomons that, when ready, would enable the Japanese to regain air superiority over Guadalcanal, after which Army troops could capture Henderson Field and Tulagi. Operations on New Guinea would follow. The offensive would be timed for January 1943. Admiral Yamamoto’s early conversations with General Imamura had focused on this scheme. But barely a month later IGHQ reversed itself. During this period of five weeks, Tokyo conducted its first true strategic review of the war.

At Truk, the assumptions built into the plan did not sit right with Ugaki Matome, though the Fleet proceeded assiduously with such elements as building a new lower Solomons airfield. Admiral Ugaki feared that the Army’s fixation on Guadalcanal might pull the Navy into a bottomless quagmire. He recognized New Guinea as more important, but reinforcing there seemed hopeless. Japanese estimates were that SOPAC supplied Cactus at a rate averaging two merchantmen a day, while the Japanese managed only their paltry submarine runs. Not wanting to miss an opportunity for strategic change, Ugaki put Captain Kuroshima’s team to work assessing the conditions that would make recapture of Guadalcanal impossible, and
the moment these might occur. Admiral Yamamoto, in a notable divergence with Ugaki, was not sure how to proceed. The C-in-C had pursued the campaign determinedly and had never yet abandoned a position.

On November 26, just a few days after the Army-Navy conversations about an offensive, Ugaki resolved to ask the NGS to send its senior operations planner to Truk to consider the opposite course—withdrawal. Not willing to commit these thoughts to a dispatch others might see, the fleet chief of staff sent a letter to Vice Admiral Fukudome Shigeru, recently appointed head of the NGS Operations Bureau, delicately probing his view. As a first step the fleet wished to reorient operations, sending the Army’s 51st Division to New Guinea instead of Cactus. If Fukudome did not detail Baron Tomioka to Truk, Ugaki would order Kuroshima to Tokyo. Ugaki entrusted his letter to a visiting flag officer on his way home.

The initial response seemed not to take Ugaki’s concerns seriously. Baron Tomioka asked the Combined Fleet to send someone to Tokyo, but to study the movement of the 51st Division to Guadalcanal instead. On December 5, Fukudome finally answered Ugaki directly, warning him against infecting the field forces with pessimism. Fukudome would dispatch an emissary to Truk, but not until the end of the month. Meanwhile, an Army-Navy conference at Truk brought a slight break in the stalemate, with Tomioka’s assistant, Commander Yamamoto Yuji, newly reassigned from Kondo’s staff, informing the group that IGHQ had approved sending some 51st Division troops to New Guinea.

The resupply fiascos of early December, plus the Army’s appeal to Imperial Headquarters, brought the dilemma to a head. Prodded by Admiral Fukudome, Nagano of NGS insisted on war gaming the supply flow. Colonel Tsuji, irrepressible as ever, saw such studies as more delay while men starved. But the war games, carried out at Rabaul, showed that barely a quarter of the matériel should be expected to arrive. Yamamoto of the NGS and Watanabe of the Combined Fleet were in Rabaul when the December failures occurred, and they witnessed the war game. General Imamura had no confidence in the Solomons effort. While he refused, as did many of his staff, to speak directly of withdrawal, Imamura vowed to do everything necessary to save the men at the front. He also war gamed an evacuation and found it dangerous but doable.

Commander Watanabe observed. When he reached Truk, Watanabe
found Admiral Yamamoto reluctant to accept these conclusions. The C-in-C pressed his staff officer to explain why Guadalcanal’s recapture had become impossible. Watanabe cited the war game. To Yamamoto this fell short of a personal assurance. The next day Watanabe Yasuji was back on a plane to Rabaul. Imamura’s associates thought he looked like a ghost. Watanabe met Imamura’s chief of staff, who forthrightly declared that the Army could not recapture Guadalcanal, but went on to say that the general could not assert that. Puzzled, Watanabe asked why. He was told that Imamura had been appointed in audience before the emperor for the declared purpose of retaking Guadalcanal. Several Army staffers confirmed this. When he heard it, Yamamoto remarked upon how difficult it could be to say a true thing. The admiral finally gave way on the issue of withdrawal.

The instant Commander Watanabe returned to Truk, Ugaki sent him on to Tokyo. The fleet’s strategy study went ahead of him. Given the growing interservice animosities, Ugaki was anxious that the initiative come from the Army, which necessitated IGHQ involvement. “The time for changing the future policy might come sooner than expected,” he speculated on the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The chief of staff widened the circle, briefing Captain Miwa, about to leave Truk to become senior staff officer for the Eleventh Air Fleet. By December 10, hardly three weeks after Kondo’s phantom naval “victory,” Ugaki’s view had hardened: The most urgent operational problem was to find some way to rescue the men on Starvation Island.

Soul-searching in Tokyo accelerated. On December 12, Emperor Hirohito began an unusually extended visit to worship at the Ise Shrine. That same day the NGS signaled its doubts. Not only were Baron Tomioka and Admiral Fukudome now in accord with Combined Fleet views, but they reported the Army General Staff as having initiated its own study. Truk was privately informed that the two armed services had reached a preliminary agreement. The Army General Staff sent planners on a South Pacific fact-finding mission, led by incoming operations section chief Colonel Sanada Joichiro, Tsuji’s replacement. At Rabaul, Kusaka Jinichi advocated fighting for New Guinea and not “hurrying” efforts to retake Guadalcanal. Mikawa’s senior staff officer, Captain Kami Shigenori, said that which was necessary: “To withdraw from Guadalcanal island temporarily to stabilize the general situation…must be considered.” Colonel Tsuji had been agitating for a pullout for weeks.

Passing through Truk on his way back to Tokyo, Colonel Sanada admitted that the situation was even bleaker than he had expected. But the Army still wanted to send 10,000 replacements to Guadalcanal in January and two full divisions for an offensive in February. Stunned, Admiral Ugaki brought up the need to decide on the basis of the overall situation, not the simple desire for a successful outcome at Guadalcanal. Colonel Sanada “took him to be talking through his hat,” but a colleague, Lieutenant Colonel Imoto Kunao, at one time Ugaki’s student at the war college, accepted his analysis. That night Ugaki had several staffers warn the Army men of the fleet’s weakness. Captain Kuroshima told them, “If the present situation continues, the Navy will not be able to move at all.” Before leaving, Colonel Sanada told Ugaki that, after all, he would recommend that the fight for New Guinea be pursued without respect to the Solomons. An IGHQ directive to this effect could be expected.

The Army fell into line with the “New Guinea first” proposition before any decision on the Solomons. Bitter fights over the allocation of shipping had been ongoing in Tokyo since November. The Army had gotten its way, but the Tojo government warned that the additional merchant ships added to the Army roster would necessarily limit raw material imports, reducing Japanese steel production by nearly 15 percent in 1943. Losing more ships in the Solomons was unacceptable. An interim directive IGHQ issued on December 23 aimed entirely at New Guinea—just in time, for MacArthur’s attacks captured Buna shortly afterward.

Tokyo’s studies proceeded. On December 25, General Hyakutake of the Seventeenth Army reported that supplies were gone. He could no longer even send out scouts. Hyakutake asked to be allowed to die an honorable death by flinging his whole army at the Americans. Imperial Headquarters considered the situation. Major reinforcements—with convoys—the Allies were sure to resist in strength. Shipping losses were already a headache, and a renewed Solomons effort meant even more vessels lost.

Colonel Sanada’s return with the results of his inspection settled the last doubts. The importance of the decision is signified by Admiral Nagano and General Sugiyama’s audience with Emperor Hirohito on December 27. The
next day the emperor expressed frustration to his military aide. Grave as was the situation, Hirohito complained, the supreme commanders had said nothing regarding how they intended to force the Allies to submit. He wanted an imperial conference to consider the matter, and professed himself ready for one at any time. The meeting was held on New Year’s Eve. The group included Prime Minister Tojo. The emperor almost never spoke on these occasions, but here he stepped out of character. Hirohito demanded to know what would be done to stem the losses. The emperor said explicitly that withdrawal from Guadalcanal must be accompanied by offensive action elsewhere. Hirohito received reports on that point, but with no alternative, he approved the new policy. On New Year’s Day, the Army operations chief left for Rabaul to announce that Japan would evacuate Guadalcanal, defend the Central Solomons, and move forward in New Guinea.

On January 4, 1943, Imperial Headquarters made it official. Admiral Nagano issued Navy Directive No. 184, which foresaw an end to efforts to recapture Guadalcanal, mandated that the Army should defend the central and northern Solomons, and specified, “During the period from about the latter part of January to the early part of February, the Army and Navy will, by every possible means, evacuate the units on Guadalcanal.”

At Truk, gloom increasingly descended over Combined Fleet leaders. Still aboard the
Yamato
—though the C-in-C already anticipated moving his flag to the newer superbattleship
Musashi—
an ominous sign came with the New Year ceremony for 1943. Broiled sea bream and salt were put at the C-in-C’s table. The admiral’s steward was somehow off his excellent service that evening. Omi Heijiro placed the
tai
fish head to the left, both a breach of etiquette and, in Japanese culture, a portent of evil. Yamamoto shrugged it off with a smile. When the year changed, the admiral told his steward, a change of manners could be permitted. But for the Japanese starving on Guadalcanal everything remained the same.

Back at Cactus, on December 9, Marine Alex Vandegrift handed the command over to Major General Alexander Patch of the U.S. Army. The reinforcement proceeded apace, and the Army soon created the XIV Corps
under Patch. Collins’s Americal Division resumed the offensive in mid-December, clearing some Japanese positions in the interior and beginning a drive toward the western end of the island. Faced with Allied dominance in the air, on December 27 the JNAF gave up its desultory effort to parachute supplies, but the fleet resumed submarine missions. Several Tokyo Express sorties also conveyed at least a modicum of comestibles and delivered a few fresh troops to help shield the retreat of the others. Mount Austen was threatened. General Patch issued orders for a last-phase offensive on January 5. His forces included the Americal and 25th Infantry Division, plus part of the 2nd Marine Division. The Marines pushed along the coast while the 25th Division slogged ahead inland. The offensive opened on January 10. The attacks made steady progress. So far the Americans were completely unaware that their adversaries were going to leave altogether.

THE CACTUS SPRINGBOARD

Despite the Tassafaronga disaster, a developing perception of advantage led to the revival of Allied debates over the future. General MacArthur, pressing hard at Buna and Gona, in parallel to the Guadalcanal campaign, agitated for activation of “Task Two” of the original U.S. Cartwheel plan, which would give him the supreme command. The SOWESPAC chief exerted pressure both at the local level, with Admiral Halsey, and with Washington headquarters. MacArthur wanted to redeploy SOPAC forces to expedite his New Guinea operations. Halsey’s units could afford him a seaborne supply line around the tip of New Guinea, and the seizure of Rabaul would be executed to protect MacArthur’s flank. Admiral Halsey remained leery of that idea. The Bull preferred to create a solid framework within which the reduction of Rabaul could be conducted with confidence. Halsey answered MacArthur in detail in a dispatch sent on November 28:

General MacArthur had also begun, as early as October, to press Washington to confirm his supremo status. MacArthur had emphasized his need for the command with Hap Arnold when the Army Air Force chief visited the South Pacific, and General Arnold’s report advocated a top command for the entire Pacific be placed under MacArthur. The recommendation embroiled the Joint Chiefs of Staff in questions of Pacific command and their corollary, the next steps in fighting the Japanese. By late November progress on Guadalcanal had begun to make it urgent to resolve these matters.